“Just see what a hodgepodge of a mess Sandy has brought home! Tobacco, biscuits, ginger, and I don’t know what not, all in a pudding. It only lacks milk and eggs to make it a cracker pudding flavored with ginger and smoking-tobacco!” And 152 everybody joined in the laugh that a glance at Sandy’s load called forth.
“Yes,” said the blushing boy; “I forgot to tie the bag at both ends, and the jouncing up and down of Younkins’s old horse (dear me! wasn’t he a hard trotter!) must have made a mash of everything in the bag. The paper of tobacco burst, and then I suppose the ginger followed; the jolting of poor old ‘Dobbin’ did the rest. Ruined, daddy? Nothing worth saving?”
Mr. Howell ruefully acknowledged that the mixture was not good to eat, nor yet to smoke, and certainly not to make gingerbread of. So, after picking out some of the larger pieces of the biscuits, the rest was thrown away, greatly to Sandy’s mortification.
“All of my journey gone for nothing,” he said, with a sigh.
“Never mind, my boy,” said his father, fondly; “since you have come back alive and well, let the rest of the business care for itself. As long as you are alive, and the redskins have not captured you, I am satisfied.”
Such was Sandy’s welcome home.
With the following Monday morning came hard work,––harder work, so Sandy thought, than miserably trying to find one’s way in the darkness of a strange region of country. For another log-house, this time on the prairie claim, was to be begun at once. They might be called on at any 153 time to give up the cabin in which they were simply tenants at will, and it was necessary that a house of some sort be put on the claim that they had staked out and planted. The corn was up and doing well. Sun and rain had contributed to hasten on the corn-field, and the vines of the melons were vigorously pushing their way up and down the hills of grain. Charlie wondered what they would do with so many watermelons when they ripened; there would be hundreds of them; and the mouths that were to eat them, although now watering for the delicious fruit, were not numerous enough to make away with a hundredth part of what would be ripe very soon. There was no market nearer than the post, and there were many melon-patches between Whittier’s and the fort.
But the new log-house, taken hold of with energy, was soon built up to the height where the roof was to be put on. At this juncture, Younkins advised them to roof over the cabin slightly, make a corn-bin of it, and wait for developments. For, he argued, if there should be any rush of emigrants and settlers to that part of the country, so that their claims were in danger of dispute, they would have ample warning, and could make ready for an immediate occupation of the place. If nobody came, then the corn-house, or bin, would be all they wanted of the structure.
But Mr. Howell, who took the lead in all such 154 matters, shook his head doubtfully. He was not in favor of evading the land laws; he was more afraid of the claim being jumped. If they were to come home from a hunting trip, some time, and find their log-cabin occupied by a “claim-jumper,” or “squatter,” as these interlopers are called, and their farm in the possession of strangers, wouldn’t they feel cheap? He thought so.
“Say, Uncle Aleck,” said Oscar, “why not finish it off as a cabin to live in, put in the corn when it ripens, and then we shall have the concern as a dwelling, in case there is any danger of the claim being jumped?”